#oneaday Day 957: Too Tired to Think of a Good Title

EHMAGERD. So tired. SO tired. I’m at that stage of tired where you can barely keep your eyes open, and yet here I am blogging, showing frankly admirable commitment to a cause that all but one other daily blogger (to my knowledge) had abandoned.

I apologise in advance for what is doubtless about to become a purely “filler” entry, its word count padded out with overly flowery language and unnecessarily complex descriptions of things that probably don’t need to be described or discussed in the first place. But it’s 2am and I’ve just got back from a two hour drive having spent all day playing board games, so… meh. My blog, my rules. (If you’re a new reader, though, sorry. Seriously. I’m usually much more coherent than this. I think.)

So what board games have I been playing? Well, the vast majority of the day ended up being monopolised (no pun intended) by the official board game adaptation of Blizzard’s Starcraft. This game comes in a hefty box with hundreds of cool pieces, and is quite complex. I’ve had a copy for some time now but for various reasons we had managed to play it precisely three quarters of a time prior to today. And that was so long ago that we had all forgotten all the rules.

Our board gaming group is somewhat loose in terms of “discipline”, for want of a better word. Gaming night is a social occasion primarily, though the games themselves of course play a prominent role. What this means in practice is that we spend a lot of time talking, looking at Cassetteboy videos on the Internet and drinking coffee when we “should” be playing. By extension, this means that a game that should take a few hours tops takes all day.

Starcraft is a prime example. The box claims 3-4 hours, which is already hefty, but throw in time for consulting the rule book and various interruptions — including a friend popping by to demonstrate the Airsoft guns we’re going to be using for one of our number’s upcoming stag do — and it’s easy to see why it took us from 3.30 to well after 10pm to finish up a single game.

Actually, it doesn’t quite explain it. Time, as the cliché goes, tends to pass incredibly quickly when you’re doing something entertaining, particularly with friends, and the experience is over all too quickly. It’s a stark reminder of the fact that we are all, in fact, adults, and consequently should probably manage our free time a little better than we sometimes do.

Still, I’m pleased to report that we did, in fact, manage to complete a game of Starcraft, and it was fun. We all understood the mechanics by the end — no thanks to the rule book, which is incredibly poorly organised, though this is not really anything new for Fantasy Flight games — and were in a position where we could take a turn without having to continually refer to step by step instructions. Which is nice.

Whether or not Starcraft will make another appearance at the table remains to be seen — games that take a very long time often tend to be bumped in favour of several shorter ones — but I enjoyed it and would certainly be up for playing it again, preferably while the rules are still fresh in my head.

But anyway. I am about to collapse from exhaustion so I am going to leave that there and go to bed before I fall asleep on my keyboard.